Shattered (26 page)

The yacht was 148 feet in length and white as a glacier, with curved window frames, a swept-back radar arch, and triple portholes in the master stateroom giving it an elegant yet aggressive look.

The man who welcomed the group aboard Finnegan’s Wake at their rendezvous point in the Caribbean Ocean echoed that appearance. Black Irish, as Michael Gannon himself was, his eyes were the same neon blue Michael viewed in the mirror when he shaved each morning, his hair just as jet-black, yet his face was more harshly hewn.

His body, too, was taller, more powerfully built. He could have stepped from the pages of one of the heroic Irish tales of kings and castles, battles and banishments that had so enthralled Michael both in childhood, then later in undergraduate school.

On a deep voice that carried a lilt of the auld sod, the man introduced himself merely as Conn. An ancient Irish name, derived from a Gaelic word meaning “hound,” or “wolf”. Conn Céthchathac had been one of Ireland’s high kings.

Michael’s maternal grandmother Reilly claimed ancestry to the man known as Conn of a Hundred Battles. The curved scar slicing from just below this modern-day Conn’s eye down to his lip suggested he’d experienced at least one battle of his own. The whiteness of the raised flesh suggested it had been some time ago.

Michael had no idea if Conn owned the yacht or simply worked for its owner, but nevertheless, his pride, as he took the group on a tour, was evident.

It boasted twin elevated lounges, complete with teak tables, wet bars, ice makers, and a large-screen pop-up plasma TV, which could pick up signals from a satellite dish. If you preferred real life, the sliding doors and swept-back windows offered breathtaking views.

A large country kitchen, complete with a galley equipped with granite countertops, dishwasher, trash compactor, microwave convection oven, and Sub-Zero refrigerator had taken over what might have been the pilothouse. Another LCD television was attached to the wall, so anyone sitting at the granite table could watch TV while eating.

And if that weren’t enough, a circular staircase led to the Sky Lounge, where two large window panels offered yet more amazing views. Including that of the touch-and-go-helipad, where, if everything went according to plan, Garrett would be piloting Rachel to safety once they’d rescued her.

“A man could easily live here,” Michael murmured as he watched a school of dolphins frolicking a mere twenty yards away.

“I do,” the Irishman said.

Michael envied this Conn his freedom. Before moving from Somersett to Swann Island, his brother, Joe, had, for a time, worked as an undercover drug agent, which had taken him all over the world. Granted, to dangerous countries where everyone always seemed out to kill him, yet still, he’d seen foreign lands and experienced more than most people would in a lifetime.

Even his sister was now happily married and living in California, in an amazing house overlooking the Pacific Ocean, both she and her husband providing a West Coast presence for Phoenix Team.

Of the three Gannon siblings, Michael was the only one still living in the city of his birth. Where, except for his time in Desert Storm, his seminary in New York State, and a year running that homeless shelter in New Orleans after Katrina, it appeared he’d never leave.

“Do you ever miss having a home?”

“Finnegan’s Wake is my home.”

“And a fabulous one it is,” Michael agreed. Without being overdone with gilt and marble, as he suspected many of its kind might be. He’d seen a handful of crew members during the tour, which was only natural for a yacht this size. But they had a way of making themselves so unobtrusive as to be nearly invisible, which had him imagining you could almost forget they were there.

“But don’t you ever miss land?” The moment he heard himself say the words, Michael regretted them. “Sorry. That was rude.”

And totally uncharacteristic, which only showed how insane this situation was making him. During his years as a parish priest, he’d learned to choose every word with extreme care. But he was no longer a priest, and if he’d had his way, they would have used some of Phoenix Team’s seemingly vast funds to just fly into the country like something out of Apocalypse Now, with guns blasting away at the bad guys holding Rachel hostage, and airlift her out. He had been forced to hold his tongue so many times during Tremayne’s planning session, he was surprised he hadn’t bitten it off.

“Don’t worry about it,” Conn said mildly. “And you’d be right: There are times when roaming the world like the Flying Dutchman isn’t exactly heaven on earth—or in this case, heaven on the sea.” The scar kept his mouth from fully smiling, but his eyes held humor that seemed to be directed inward. “But then again, what is?”

“Good point,” Michael said.

The dolphins were moving on, riding a trail of water turned copper and gold by the setting sun.

“Tremayne told me that it’s your woman who’s to be rescued.”

It was not a question, but Michael answered it, anyway. “She might not be fully aware of that yet, but yes. Rachel Moore is, indeed, my woman.”

“She’s a fortunate woman. To be so loved.”

“Perhaps you’ll vouch for me. Once we get her aboard.”

“Aye. I could do that surely enough,” Conn the Irishman agreed.

Both men fell silent as they stared out over the darkening sea. The moon had waned to a thin sliver crescent, but a new moon would have been more ideal for when they launched the Zodiac, which for some unknown reason, the former SEALs insisted on calling an IBS.

Michael was concerned they’d risk being seen, but although he’d been a doctor, his work at that forward MASH unit had taught him that there was no such thing as a perfect battle plan. Hadn’t the damn scud that had hit Rachel’s tent been proof of that?

“I envy you,” Conn said finally, breaking the thoughtful dusk silence.

“Oh?” Michael might have found it odd that a man with such apparent wealth would envy him, who, thanks to the penury salary he’d received from the diocese over the years, could scarcely afford the single-bedroom apartment he was renting from Brendan O’Neill above the Black Swann pub. “Why?”

“It must be an incredible yet humbling thing to care about anyone so deeply.”

His voice was flat. Rough.

And in those neon eyes, Michael viewed a desolation so deep and so unrelentingly dark, it chilled him to the bone.

“If I weren’t a reasonable woman,” Kirby said once the bellman had left them alone again, “I might be annoyed at the suggestion that you allowed me to come on this mission.”

“It’s a chauvinist country.” Shane shrugged. “It’s damn dangerous for a local to go against a dictatorial government. Especially one as brutal as this one. Everyone on this mission has to totally buy into the program, because we’re talking life and death.”

“Still—”

“Your head was covered in Pakistan,” he cut her off. “Your arms, too. I may have a few blank spots concerning events after the helo went down, but that’s one of the things I remember very well.”

“It was the custom in that region.”

“Exactly. Unless that bellman’s playing both sides against the middle, which very well could be, he’s risking his life for a belief. For his country. A Latin country, where males are not accustomed to females calling the shots. Especially on a matter as important as this.”

“Yet the CIA station chief is a woman.”

Shane couldn’t recall her arguing as much as she’d done the past two days. Then again, their shared agenda—having sex as often as possible—had pretty much precluded disagreements. Then there was also the fact that she was worried about her friend.

“I’m not even going to attempt to get into official-spook mind-set,” he said. “Zach and Quinn would know more about that than me, since I mostly spent my deployments in the air, where there’s not much use for subterfuge and James Bond stuff,” he said. “But I’m guessing that perhaps, since Patterson’s under light cover, taking on such traditionally female jobs as a press officer and society reporter draws less attention to herself.”

“And as an embassy employee, she can pick up gossip on the diplomatic circuit,” Kirby allowed.

“While at the same time, her freelance job puts her inside the paper, where Vasquez undoubtedly has journalist sycophants cranking out pro-government propaganda, which gives her an inside track on what the guy’s thinking. Perhaps even planning,” Shane said.

“I suppose that makes sense. But—”

He put a finger against her lips to cut off her planned argument. “It’ll be okay,” he assured her.

He wouldn’t allow either of them to think otherwise, because if they didn’t pull this off, all of them, Kirby included, could end up in prison. Or dead.

While Shane agreed, intellectually, with what she’d said during the planning meeting about dead being the worst option, the Neanderthal male lurking inside him needed to protect his woman against all the bad men who might want to do terrible things to her.

“You can’t know that,” she argued. “Dammit, I was all pumped up to go one-on-one with Vasquez. I even had come up with all sorts of lovey-dovey ways to back up our story.”

“Don’t let me stop you,” he said.

“Why am I not surprised that’s the part of the plan you’d latch on to? After how hot you thought I was when I showed up at Phoenix Team, even in my ugly suit, and how you really, really wanted to have sex again.”

Okay. She’d just managed to surprise the hell out of him.

He narrowed his eyes. “You’re guessing.”

Using a combination of finger spelling and gestures that might not be as fast and smooth as his own was, she signed, “And how you really wanted to have sex on the conference table.”

She switched to oral speech. “During my pediatrics internship rotation, I was assigned a deaf kid. I only intended to learn enough to handle the basics, then it sort of became like learning Spanish or French. I just wanted to be able to communicate if I ever needed to. It’s been a long time since I’ve needed it, but it came back. Enough to read what you were saying, anyway.”

“I suppose this is where I should claim to be embarrassed for thinking such sexist thoughts.”

“No.” Her eyes crinkled a little at the corners. “Because I was thinking pretty much the same thing.”

“Great minds,” he said.

“Well, sex has always been the one thing we’ve been able to agree on.” She began pacing again, as she had in the club lounge, her silk skirt swirling about her toned calves. “Did I mention that I hate, hate, hate Vasquez being away from the city now, of all times?”

“Like Prussian Field Marshal Helmuth von Moltke said, ‘No plan ever survives contact with the enemy,’ ” Shane replied.

She paused, shooting him a look over her shoulder. “I thought General Patton said it.” Kirby was sure she remembered it from the movie.

“It’s often attributed to him,” Shane agreed. “Others say it was Eisenhower. There are also votes for Napoleon. But it really did originate with old Helmuth in the mid-nineteenth century, though he wasn’t nearly so succinct. Actually, his exact words were ‘Therefore, no plan of operations extends with any certainty beyond the first contact with the main hostile force.’

“Like always happens, over time, his words got condensed into pithier phrasing, then put into more familiar mouths for the audience of the time.

“Hey,” he said, when she stared at him, “I told you I majored in military history. That’s pretty much Great General Quotes 101.”

Well. She was definitely discovering that he was more than the cowboy pilot she’d first thought him to be. The hottie she’d figured was just into getting laid between missions. Which, at least in the beginning, she’d managed to convince herself that was all she wanted, too.

But she’d been wrong.

“Well, whoever said it, it makes my point.” This was not the time to focus on their relationship, whatever it was. Her frustrated breath feathered the new spiky bangs Titania had given her, which she had to admit, set off her eyes. “We’re not even going to be able to meet with the damn enemy until late tonight; more likely tomorrow at the earliest!”

But since she couldn’t exactly go running out to the compound, she supposed she had no choice but to go along with the program.

“It’ll be all right,” Shane repeated.

“I’m just so worried,” she complained.

“I know. But it’s not as if we have any choice,” he pointed out. “Meanwhile, since we’re obviously being tailed by Vasquez’s men, we might as well go out and make our cover look more convincing.”

“Like I’d go partying with my friend being held hostage,” she muttered.

“You have to eat. Besides, the guy doesn’t exactly possess the same ethics you do. I’ll bet that whenever he takes a break from waterboarding, he’s got a willing woman waiting nearby to help him get his rocks off.”

“You’ve such a way with words,” she muttered. Though it was probably true.

“We’ll call the palace switchboard,” Shane said. “Request an audience. They’ll tell you he’s out of town. You’ll beg—tearfully would be a nice touch—to speak with him as soon as he returns.”

He shrugged. “It’s the best we can do. Besides,” he said, dancing his fingertips over her bare shoulders, “a sexy dress like this deserves to be taken out on the town.”

“You’re impossible,” she said, even as she felt a little thrill beneath her skin.

“I know.” He touched her, just a slow swipe of the knuckles up her cheek, as if he knew that if he kissed her they’d never leave. “That’s one of the things you’ve always loved about me.”